


in defense of the boys who drained the sea

by robinsegg



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Gen, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Probably an unrealistic depiction of boys unrepressing and finally talking about their issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29566062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: Kageyama Tobio and Oikawa Tooru are not friends. They don’t even like each other. They’re full blooded adults, which doesn’t at all explain why they’re sat across from each other in this twenty-four hour diner.OR: my grand plan, and how i destabilized my own personal mythology.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kageyama Miwa & Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio & Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 11
Kudos: 43





	in defense of the boys who drained the sea

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a fic that is the culmination of my MANY MANY thoughts on Kitagawa Daiichi, and Oikawa and Kageyama's strangely childish/sibling-like rivalry (imo) and also Kageyama Miwa, who I love and deserves the world? imo. but that's a fact.
> 
> A lot of my thoughts on kitaiichi come from some possible over-analysis of Kitaiichi, but I'm willing to argue that the coach is an absolute ass who helped both Kageyama and Oikawa become the self destructive weirdo disasters we all know and love today, and also they were middle schoolers!! Anyway, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy <3

OR: A GUIDE ON HOW TO CATCH THE SUN BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH.

Tobio and Tooru do not talk, over a series of many years, and then they do.

THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR

“So- okay.” Oikawa starts, a panicked edge to his voice that Hajime thinks of semi-fondly, mostly with exasperation. It’s a comfort that even a continent apart they can still do this. “Do you ever have a sort of sibling relationship with someone you’re not even related to and no one except you can see how two sides of the same coin you are and you’re angry and bitter and antagonistic but also no one really understands you except that other person, because all the bad shit you went through they also did?”

Hajime shakes his head. “No. Not at all, man.”

“Well,” Oikawa sniffs, and jeez, okay, he’s probably gonna have to muscle through this conversation with brute force if he flipped the switch to performing that quickly, which sucks because he can’t physically knock some sense into him when he’s being stupid through a laptop screen. Looking off camera with a roll of his eyes, Oikawa continues. “Of course you wouldn’t get it, Iwa-chan. You’re blessed with naturally perfect relationships and you’ll be glorious and uncontroversial for the rest of your life and anyway you’re an only child so you wouldn’t even get it.”

It was always sort of funny how Oikawa managed to make compliments sound like insults.

Hajime affixes his most unimpressed state onto his face. “I’m best friends with you, asshole, so clearly I’m not that lucky. Anyway, who are you even talking about? The only people you had a weird vendetta against was Kageyama and Wakatoshi, so-“

“Wakatoshi?” Oikawa shrieks, loudly, much too loud for 10 AM, half an hour after his first class of the day.

“I’m gonna hang up,” Hajime threatens as he watches his roommate, walking by his room, raise an eyebrow. Hajime offers a shaky, apologetic smile. Kevin throws him an apple. This is their relationship. It works.

Oikawa is still speaking. “Well excuse me for being surprised that you call our former high school enemy Wakatoshi, Iwa-chan.” It looks like he’s gearing up to say more bullshit. Hajime quickly cuts in.

“Stop deflecting. You’re even worse at this than high school. Who’s this about.” Bat, bat, bat. Get through the labyrinth by bulldozing through the walls.

He coos, “only because no one knows me like my Iwa-chan. I’m out of practice!” And in return, Hajime gags.

“You wouldn’t bring it up if you didn’t want to talk about it, man,” He says instead of continuing that line (what Oikawa seemed to be implying was a little upsetting, maybe-- that only Hajime saw him well enough to need to be good at deflecting, and that he would need to hide from him. He didn’t like that. It made him feel like he failed. Although-- well. Maybe he did.), uneasy. He wasn’t lying when he said Oikawa was worse at this than usual. 

There’s a lot about Oikawa that’s confusing. Hajime knows this intimately as The Official best friend slash long distance life partner slash on again off again One That Got Away, often switched with being his on again off again Reluctant Scorned Devotee (he’s unhappy about that one too, yeah), as well as a nice little amalgamation of disparate parts that range from his wrangler to his last line of defense (offense? Sometimes he mixes up their relationship on the court, dead in the water as that may be, to their relationship off the court, alive and thriving and impossibly more complicated than being the ace ever was). Being caught in Oikawa’s orbit means putting on as many hats as you can just to keep up with him, racing along like he’s trying to catch the sun and picking up as many identities as he can along the way.

But this, at least for Hajime, isn’t complicated. When Oikawa wants to say something, he does. Things he doesn’t want to say don’t slip out. Not for the first time, Hajime feels a little resentful at their dual, incompatible hungers that placed them so far from each other, maybe for a long long time. 

He does adore him. If you really asked him, too, he’d say he’s never regretted it a day in his life. Just regretted what he couldn’t do and what Oikawa could- and alternatively, what Oikawa couldn’t do and tried to do anyway and what Hajime tried to stop and couldn’t- or what Hajime could see and Oikawa couldn’t- or. He’s in California studying sports science and Oikawa is in Argentina being invincible and probably far happier than he could ever be with Hajime and far more bereft, too.

“I have no lost love for Tobio-chan,” he begins airily, and Hajime frowns. “But- hm. I’m glad he found a coach that was kind to him. Yes?”

Hajime nods, confused. He forgets sometimes that even when he’s trying his hardest to be cryptic and confusing, he doesn’t hold a candle to the natural Oikawa, who Hajime still sort of feels like he needs a dictionary to decipher. Labyrinths upon labyrinths. From one layer of Oikawa to the next, searching for something that makes sense til he finally finds himself in an empty dark room with a lost little boy, and he’ll still never be sure if that boy is a reflection or the true self, or even if the labyrinth walls he bulldozed through were a part of him too, not just— armor. Not a barrier but natural terrain, destroyed in an attempt to understand.

Oikawa smiles, and Hajime kind of wants to analyze it six ways to Sunday, but mostly it’s just a pretty smile. One of his best. 

ODYSSEUS AND PENELOPE 

Shouyou loves Kageyama because he never tries to be cruel, even if that took him a while to learn. When you’re young you’re stupid and that’s true for EVERYONE, but ESPECIALLY Shouyou. But also-- he loves Kageyama for a LOT of reasons. He loves how Kageyama keeps wanting to get a cat but keeps accidentally moving into apartments that don’t allow pets, because he always forgets to ask, and he loves how that means once they’re both in Japan again they’ll probably move in together because Shouyou’s been looking at apartments and he KNOWS they allow pets, and anyway him and Kageyama would be GREAT cat dads, excuse you Tsukishima we’re very responsible, shut up!!! He loves when Kageyama gets him little gifts he sees, things to put on a keychain and stuff. He loves how Kageyama is always one step behind him and one step in front of him, pushing forward and pulling him along to new beautiful heights and Shouyou gets to do the same to him. When Kageyama is pushing him forward he’s pulling him along and when Kageyama is pulling him along he’s pushing him forward and so on and so forth, into the great blue sky and up and up and up into the moon. 

He says all of this, in excruciating detail, when he meets up with Oikawa under the sunny Rio sky. They’re at an outdoor cafe, Shouyou is wearing his nicest smile, and he’s taking a lot of delight in the face he makes-- like he’s bit on a lemon.

Contrary to popular belief, Shouyou is well aware of all that Kageyama is, and neither of them are stupid. Shouyou knows him like the calluses on his hand, and if there’s one thing he doesn’t quite love about Kageyama, and there are admittedly quite a few, it’s how hard it is to wheedle out the Collected History Of Kageyama Tobio. Hinata Shouyou, destined to unravel the spool of thread that makes up his Tobio, lovely and effortlessly complicated and endlessly simple. Just like him.

And then there’s Oikawa, who he’s sure has more history with Kageyama than his unravelling could ever fully discover. But that’s fine, because there is no Oikawa and Hinata and Kageyama, not that he would ever want that, and so he doesn’t need to know all of it.

When he video calls Kageyama later, he’s yawning like an old man, the bustle of Rome loud outside as it always is during their calls, because Kageyama likes to keep his windows open even on a city street that gets more foot traffic than should reasonably be allowed. Shouyou misses him like an ache in his chest.

“Oikawa and I got lunch today,” he says, and laughs at the inevitable grimace that graces his face.

“Cool.” Kageyama grits out, a delightful grunt that is admirable only in how hard he tried to disguise his displeasure and how terribly he failed.

“You can say he sucks and you hate him, I don’t mind and I know,” he says earnestly.

Kageyama stares. “I don’t hate him.” 

A pause, as Shouyou watches him gather his thoughts. “But he does suck?” He asks only half-jokingly, to which Kageyama hums affirmatively. 

“Yes.” He pauses. “I… respect Oikawa very much. But we’ve never- um- liked each other? Well, I mean, I knew him when I was a lot younger but I don’t think he liked me back then either.” 

Shouyou tilts his head, bright-eyed. “What do you mean? Like at your middle school? What are you eating?”

“... Pasta. No, before that. Our families ran in the same circles, I think. I don’t hate him. I just want to keep beating him. Which is easier said than done.”

“And what did you have yesterday? But yeah, I mean-- obviously you want to beat him. _I_ want to beat everyone, so I win. Duh.”

“That’s stupid logic you know I want to beat everyone too Hinata and you’re not even winning against me right now so--”

“KAGEYAMA.”

“... I had pasta again.” 

“That’s why you’re cranky. Not enough variety. Bad cook.”

“You’re not my dietician,” Kageyama says petulantly. 

Shouyou laughs at his face. “We both talk to Iwaizumi regularly enough to know you’re being silly.”

“Ah! By the way,” he says, “Does that ever get awkward? Iwaizumi, I mean.” Kageyama tilts his head.

“Why?”

“Because you guys played together in middle school and he’s Oikawa’s-- do you know what’s going on with them?” Kageyama gives him a flat stare. “Right, yeah, why would you. Anyway, whatever’s going on with them, they’re still friends and he’s always been on Oikawa’s team. So like-- is it awkward?”

A pause.

Another, longer pause.

Then a shake of his head. “Iwaizumi’s always been kind to me.”

“What kind of answer is THAT?” Shouyou bursts out, pointing at Kageyama (who couldn’t see him because he was glaring down at his food which is like, okay, sure, ignore your handsome boyfriend for MORE pasta, whatever, it’s totally not like you just gave a super weird answer to a normal question and you’re the worst liar ever so there’s definitely more to the story and--) 

“It’s-- hard. To say it right.” Kageyama sits back, pasta abandoned. Oh, when they were back in Japan Shouyou was _so_ going to make him a genuinely good meal. Just to prove how shitty of a cook Kageyama was. Obviously. “He likes Oikawa more but he- I mean, Oikawa or I guess Iwaizumi? I don’t know. Oikawa really didn’t like me. Iwaizumi was-- good about that. I guess. So it’s not awkward.”

“That’s really vague, Kageyama,” Shouyou says gently.

“I’m _trying,_ ” he shoots back. He knew that. He knew that. Shouyou loves Kageyama a lot, so he knows all too well how hard it is for him to explain. Sometimes he thinks the two of them are at opposite ends of the string, pulling and pulling until they reach a centerpoint; the shipwreck that reveals the person at the heart of your heart. They’re looking for him together.

Shouyou wants to unravel Tobio, but not across continents.

He’s so homesick, it’s painful. 

PERSEPHONE

Miwa loves Tobio because-- no, wait, she doesn’t need a reason. Miwa loves Tobio because he’s Tobio, and he was made to be loved. 

CASSANDRA AND HELENUS

Miwa is fifteen and her baby brother is very earnest and very excitable and he loves nothing more than his family and volleyball and the snacks Miwa gets for him on their way home from school everyday. She can’t help but love him, even if she just wishes it didn’t have to only be her and Kazuyo-san who gave him love.

Tonight her parents are going to some kind of party, dragging along with them The Ever Elusive Kageyama Siblings, a term so rarely used for the two of them it feels foreign and invasive, a term she doesn’t like at all. In the future, Miwa will wish for the simplicity of being on the same level as her brother, two children shuffled off as the picture of a warm family. At least when they weren’t treated like people it was for the same reasons, she will think, and she will feel guilty though she doesn’t quite understand why.

“Tobio,” she says, wracking her brain for a question that might stave off his tears, “What hurts?”

Tobio latches onto her with a fat little hand, grasping tight her long, manicured fingers. “Itches,” he mumbles, and Miwa sighs. That makes sense.

Her party dress itches just as bad as Tobio’s sweater does, but she doesn’t complain. If he starts crying (which he might, and Miwa doesn’t quite know what she’ll do if he does. She has the inkling that The Calm Down Techniques her and Kazuyo-san have worked on with Tobio probably won’t slide so easily.) and Miwa even brings up that hey, I Also Don’t Like This, well. Monkey see, monkey do, as her parents would say, and then they’d blame it on her as if they’re conjoined twins instead of two kids.

Her parents are well-meaning and that’s not a compliment because she has no interest in people that can only be parents a quarter of the time, or when they’re bothered to be, and then expect their children to still obey them. She hates her parents a little because they always come home shocked to see that The Kageyama Siblings have changed, as if they hadn’t deliberately had their backs turned during metamorphosis. She hates her parents a lot because they’re not even good when they’re around.

And so she takes Tobio to his room and gets him a little tee shirt to wear under the sweater, and it’s all fine and she blows bubbles on his little tummy even though they’re all in agreement he’s Too Old For That Stuff Now, but she’s barely a sister so she might as well get what she can, even if that means little Tobio stays a baby in her head longer than he should. In the future, Miwa will forgive herself for this, and for not staying longer than she should have. A give and take, she thinks.

And her party dress stays itchy, but what can you do?

ICARUS, REDUX

Miwa loves Tobio, but she barely knows him. Or at least she knows an endpoint of Tobio, where she should’ve known an eternity after it. But that’s what happens, she thinks, when parents aren’t parents and siblings have to be better and grandfathers die and little baby brothers are left all alone in the big old house at the end of the street. Our Tobio grows up and away and sprouts wings and flies away from her, but Miwa flew away first, so it’s okay. No harsh feelings, since Miwa watches as many of his games as she can and brags about him to her customers and Tobio doesn’t know that, of course, doesn’t know that he’s always got someone in his corner because she never really told him once she sprouted wings and flew up and up and up into the sun, but still, it has to count for something, right, the fact that she’s watching, that she’s there even if she’s not?

She misses her baby brother, forgives herself for all that she couldn’t be everyday, and ignores the text from her mother about selling the house. She lives in happiness, Tokyo made her city of light.

And Tobio visits, and she loves him like a different version of herself. She loves him like Kageyama Miwa, if The Kageyama Siblings were made to love easy.

Miwa likes her apartment, she really does, but both her and Tobio frown at the ugly fluorescent lights of her bathroom, cramped as is and even worse with an Olympic volleyball player crowded next to the sink. “This wouldn’t need to happen here if you just got a good stylist,” she says with a put-upon sigh, as if they have this argument weekly.

“The hair was getting in my eyes so I cut it,” Tobio says simply.

Miwa looks at him, flint-eyed. “I forgive you for your terrible judgement.” Then she pushes him to the bathtub and laughs when he almost falls in and pouts at him, wondering how to salvage his awful awful breakdown bangs. She feels warmth bleed into her, and wonders if Tokyo can hold enough of itself to make room for hope between two strange siblings.

In the meantime, Tobio fidgets. “Do you remember Oikawa?” He asks, and Miwa tilts her head. “The Oikawas. I mean.”

“The sister was nice, I think,” Miwa says ponderingly. “I might still have her number? She’s got a cute kid, last I heard.” Boy, does that bring her back. Being an adult is weird-- all those people she saw as tangential to her own life popping back up unexpectedly. Aside from the odd instagram post, she’d forgotten about her entirely.

Miwa thinks it’s a little endearing how even though he dwarfs her in size, Tobio still manages to fidget like an awkward little kid tugging on her skirt. “What did you think about the other one? The boy.”

“Hm-- I don’t remember him too well. A little weird, maybe? Only really wanted to talk about volleyball. A little like you, right? You guys were around each other a lot at those stupid parties.” Tobio nods, and Miwa smiles a little smugly. The Kageyama Siblings, united in their shared hatred of Showing Up For Events Because It’s The Polite Thing To Do. Poor Tobio, she thinks as she snips at his hair, having to do all that press stuff for the Olympics. Well, she thinks, at least no one will make fun of his bangs. “Why?”

“Did I- he’s playing against us in the Olympics. Argentina.”

Miwa washes his hair slowly, letting the drip of her showerhead fill up the silence of the room. “I remember seeing that, I think. I hadn’t connected the dots. Wow, all the way across the world.” She whistles slowly. Her grand escape from the big old house at the end of the street seems much more miniscule now, but she doesn’t think she’d manage to make it all the way there without her legs giving out. Small goals, small portions. They work out for her-- few people can drink so deeply from the cup and survive.

“Yeah,” Tobio replies, then clears his face. She starts combing through the wet strands. “Do you remember me ever being-- mean to him?” Miwa pulls back, taking in the whole of Tobio’s parts, his blank face like a placid lake, then scrunches up her nose.

“No. You’re a sweetie, Tobio,” and she laughs at his furious blush, tempering that glare of his, “You are! Don’t argue with me. And- hm. Well, I don’t really remember him so well. That was so long ago and all, but he always seemed nice, I guess. There was this one time you guys shoved yourselves into a guest bedroom, actually. Or maybe it was the bathroom? I can never remember, you were always so hard to find at those parties, Tobio. Anyway, you fell asleep and I found his little jacket covering you. He was so embarrassed, I made sure to tell his sister,” she says, chuckling a little evilly. Little brothers are always so silly, concerned with seeming cool and unaffected. Just can’t admit how big they love. 

“You’re a little scary,” he says, easing up, and she smiles. But- and she doesn’t have the right to think this, maybe- there seems something off in his eyes, not as focused on the present.

“And don’t you forget it,” Miwa replies, swatting at him with a comb. And they move on.

DAEDALUS

So here’s how the story goes:

Kitagawa Daiichi is the school you go to if you know you love volleyball and your parents are willing to spend money for a sport you might drop in a year. Most of these children will play volleyball in high school, some might even go on to play it in college, or a rec league, or they will stop when practice gets too hard and realize that losing hurts more than you can imagine. But sometimes, there are children that could rule the world if they cared about it half as much as volleyball.

Oikawa Tooru and Kageyama Tobio are two of these kids, and where these children see a volleyball court stretching out for the rest of their lives, the coach sees an opportunity. One child will be a punishment for the other-- motivation and warning wrapped in one. And from there those two will rise above and beyond, pushed forward by scarcity. Nothing else matters.

Kitaiichi’s coach sees the bench as punishment, and why shouldn’t he? Of course, these children are humans and not chess pieces. A manufactured rivalry, however much the resentment is real, doesn’t work like it should. So here’s what happens:

A coach sees an opportunity. Two children are made robots. They work too hard and push themselves too far. They self-destruct. They get punished. The story goes on.

ORPHEUS

Sometimes, Tooru wonders if he’s crazy. Sometimes, Tooru’s hand buzzes, waiting for the sound of a slap that will never come. The world spins on, working towards a pale imitation of the feeling he gets when setting a ball.

There’s a song he keeps looking for, that he’ll never find. He just keeps playing, motions easier than breathing and harder than living. 

ICARUS, ORIGIN

ALSO KNOWN AS: CUPID, AND HIS ENEMY PSYCHE

Kageyama Tobio and Oikawa Tooru are not friends. They don’t even like each other. They’re full blooded adults, which doesn’t at all explain why they’re sat across from each other in this twenty-four hour diner. 

Kageyama Tobio and Oikawa Tooru are not friends. They don’t even like each other. He is ten years old and much cooler than the baby (stick tongue out here) that’s in _his_ hiding spot at the end of the party. This doesn’t explain why Oikawa doesn’t actually make him leave.

Kageyama Tobio and Oikawa Tooru are not friends. They don’t even like each other. Kageyama is thirteen and a little scared and mostly confused as Iwaizumi pulls Oikawa away from him. This doesn’t explain why Oikawa doesn’t like him, but it does confirm that he Does Not Like Him.

The ricochet of almosts burns itself into the personal history of Oikawa and Kageyama, and they both wonder if this will be another almost.

Sometimes Tobio wonders if he’s crazy. Were things really all so strange? Wasn’t that just a regular rivalry, and one outburst does not a system’s problem make?

This is all to say that he sits down with Oikawa, sun-kissed and shark toothed, for a two in the morning dinner (breakfast? Can scrambled eggs count as a midnight snack?), and wonders if he’ll be devoured now that they’re on equal ground. He didn’t set this up, of course he didn’t. If Tobio had his way, he’d spend the rest of his life trying to find an edge on the cliff face which is, of course, Oikawa’s face, so that he can pull and pull and slip off the mask that Tobio isn’t even sure exists. And he would do that by weaseling out line after line from all that bore witness to his personal mythology. Not even because he cares so much about him, but because Oikawa, for all that he was confusing and cryptic and downright awful, also felt like-- a mirror. 

Tobio blames Shouyou for this, as he does with most things.

“Why are _you_ here?” Oikawa asks, petulant.

Tobio stares for a second. “Me and Shouyou are on a date. He’s getting us drinks. You don’t even live in this country.”

“My nephew is graduating,” he sniffs, opening up his phone and obnoxiously beginning to snap pictures of himself, the table and the elaborate bread set up. Probably there were some unflattering ones of Tobio mixed in. Maybe he’d send them to Shouyou. “I’m visiting for the time being.”

An image of the child from that little tykes school appears in his mind. _Graduating, already?_ “Are you that old?” He asks, a little shocked.

“From middle school, you little demon!” Oikawa screeches as quietly as he can. Good to know he believes in table manners, Tobio supposes, feeling fifteen again, playing tug of war for a volleyball in one of his most immature moments. A huff. “Two in the morning date?”

And Tobio shrugs. “It’s the off-season. We can do what we want.” A pause.

Oikawa does not take the opportunity to continue the conversation. Tobio thinks the next thing to ask would probably be why he’s having dinner, alone, at this time of night and probably that’s a secret he doesn’t want to reveal.

This is how it goes: A waitress comes by and they order the same thing and Oikawa sniffs and changes his order immediately, as if he had that prepared, and still Shouyou does not come. And five minutes pass and Tobio looks around the restaurant and still Shouyou does not come. And two minutes pass again and Tobio finally thinks to check his phone, which has a single unread message.

_Shouyou_

Saw Oikawa at table four!!! Tell him hi!!! In the bathroom I’ll be out in like ten but I saw an old friend so we’re catching up!!!! 

You’ve hogged me all night so don’t be stingy <333333

“Shouyou says hi,” Tobio says in a deadpan, glaring down at his boyfriend’s over-enthusiastic texts. That was an exorbitant amount of 3-hearts.

_Me_

OK.

“I don’t know what he sees in you,” Oikawa says, and Tobio resists the urge to say something mean and snappy like _he probably likes the fact that I’m willing to live on the same continent as him._

“I guess he just got used to me,” Tobio says instead. “Since we’ve known each other since middle school.”

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “I know that. Iwa-chan wouldn’t shut up about that game, even though Shouyou lost miserably. Tobio-chan was so cruel back then, all those evil tosses when you knew you’d be winning.”

_Shouyou_

He’s a banker now!!! Do you think Kunimi knows him? >:O

The thing about talking to Oikawa, Tobio thinks irritably, is that he actively tries to bury what he means under three layers of… lies, he guesses. That’s the closest thing he can think of it as. Oikawa, luminous and awful, and Tobio grasping at feathers trying to catch him. Because if he catches him he’ll stop shifting so easily and if he stops shifting then Tobio can name this- feeling or meeting or person, take your pick- feeling and make some sense out of it. And then maybe he can make some sense out of himself.

“Ah,” Oikawa continues, saccharine, “But it all worked out in the end. No thanks to middle school, so why remember all those games?”

Abruptly, frustrated with years of wheedling out thoughts and feelings when he was barely good at asking directly, Tobio grits out, “Middle school wasn’t good to us, right?” He glares down at his coffee, and then directly at Oikawa. It sounded so childish when he said it aloud, but he didn’t know how else to explain it. There weren’t words in the dictionary that summed up all his feelings on Kitaiichi, and Kunimi and Kindaichi, and Oikawa and Iwaizumi. And his coach. 

So. It wasn’t good to him. It wasn’t bad, that’s not the right word. Just not good. Lots of things were like that, straddling the line between moralities more easily than expected. He just knows that there was something wrong with how he was treated. It’s hard to externalize feelings. Like if-- he’s on the court, he’s good, and important, but the court is temporary. And if he’s only important on the court and the court is temporary than that means he’s only temporarily important and if he only temporarily matters then everywhere else is the Tobio That Failed, or the Tobio That Is Not Valuable, or the Tobio Who Has Tantrums Because He Can’t Keep Control Of His Emotions And He’s Not Good Enough. Then the Tobio Who Has Tantrums bled into the Tobio On The Court and so Tobio On The Court became Tobio That Is Not Valuable, and he was removed from the one place where he mattered. And by the end of Kitaiichi he had no value.

He only knows all this because it was so different after middle school. In the moment, the bench felt like a punishment and it was a punishment because Tobio was always operating at a net loss, trying and failing to make up for an… inherent failure in him.

Oikawa doesn’t say anything. The inherent failure was not real. “They-- used us to punish each other,” Tobio says, grasping at straws, hoping for some thread of connection, the moment that tells him this was not all in his head. He wants the grid to reveal some inherent truth of him. He wants Oikawa to tangle the grid. He wants a friend that bore witness to and played a role in the destabilization of himself. He wants to be that friend.

“Tobio-chan,” Oikawa begins condescendingly, “They were just ruthless about volleyball, no? The strongest player gets to stay on the court. We turned out fine in the end, so no harm done.”

Flatly, Tobio replies, “Shouyou’s told me he called you insane like, five different times.” Oikawa scoffs.

“What do you even want out of this?” He asks, clear-eyed for once.

A prince holds court and throws an apple at a wall and watches it burst.

“To forgive you for middle school.” They both know what he’s talking about.

“I don’t remember asking for forgiveness.”

Another prince holds court and watches an exploding star and quietly, in the back of his head, wishes for something like that to happen to him.

“Well, I do.” A pause. “I’m sorry they used me to hurt you,” and this one is harder to follow. He knows that.

“It’s okay.” He doesn’t sound confused. Just honest. A prince holds court and there are lines of sticks in front of him. One by one, they go _snap_. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Tobio looks at him, searching for a face under the face. Oikawa looks back for once, placid eyes and sharp grin and warmth like a house fire. Under fluorescent lights, life blossoms. A prince holds court and rips up the marble floor.

“We were kids,” Tobio says with finality. “And we got fucked up because the adults didn’t care about us.”

Oikawa nods. What else is there to say? You walk into a diner and you walk into your life and you walk onto the volleyball court and into the royal court and everyday you’re just hoping that this will be the right moment, the moment where the people that hurt you walk into your life again and tell you _my god, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry I made your pain an afterthought for my grand plan, you were right, you were right all along, you’re not crazy,_ and that moment never happens. It doesn’t exist. All you can do is look into the eyes of those who were hurt like you and bear witness. And tell them they’re not crazy. Let them know there’s someone in their corner. 

He sees Shouyou walk out of the bathroom.

“Yeah,” Oikawa agrees hoarsely.

Chasing for the face under the face, Tobio thinks he’s discovered a pool.

**Author's Note:**

> you may find me on tumblr @[swordatsunset](https://swordatsunset.tumblr.com/) <3 and [here](https://swordatsunset.tumblr.com/post/643558999890034688/collecting-thoughts-on-my-unposted-fic-but-i) is my post where I go into some detail about my choices for the Greek mythology titles, which is a little presumptuous but I wrote it for myself, and maybe some of you would like to read it! I am willing to go into detail about it/anything else though lol :3


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